After doing meter routes all week, we got an easy day today and only delivered overdue bill notices. After meter reading, delivering notices is like having a paid day off. Oddly, the closest dog scare this week happened today, from a dog that violently busted through a gate and came at me--or so it seemed at first. I thought my goose was cooked for about 1/2 second, until I realized that the dog was frantically doing a Scooby-Doo stop, butt dragging and all four feet desperately pushing backward. He got himself stopped and hit the gate again, this time going back in, then took up a position about six feet inside the fence and resumed barking. Apparently his gate-busting was an accident due to him slipping on some smooth concrete. It really cracked me up.

We had several people make jokes this week about spraying chihuahuas. Thanks to the CPS shenanigans this week, we have begun referring to the pepper spray as "chihuahua sauce."

While doing some news searches tonight on meter readers, I came across one "tips" list that suggested carrying doggie treats to reinforce friendliness in dogs that are prone to it (some just aren't). I might actually try that. Except that I expect there are enough paranoid freaks out there who will accuse me of trying to poison their dog if they see me do it.

Something I have been considering for some time is to start the kids on gun handling and safety. I got inspired by last night's American Shooter, so today I went and bought a small Daisy rifle and some neat silhouette targets rated for BB guns, and I plan on starting the project tomorrow. (More posts on that as it develops). I also picked up a carton of CO2 cartrdiges for my pellet pistol. While at Walmart, I saw that they also have a Walther PPK look-alike pellet pistol that has a functioning slide to simulate recoil. That looked pretty cool to me, and I might have to shell out the money for it sometime soon. I expect that the slide uses up a lot of extra air--if anyone has experience with a gun like this, give me some comments.

I had a Daisy when I was a kid, not a real Red Ryder, but something similar. My favorite targets were empty shotgun shells. I had a big shoebox full of 16-gauge shells (from my dad's gun), plus a few 12-gauge and .410 from my uncle and cousin (and later, some 20-gauge shells from my own gun). I spent uncountable hours as a kid setting these up and shooting them down, eventually even building small sand walls to provide them with "cover" and make them even smaller and harder to hit targets. I had a good collection of empty shells because, before I was big enough to hunt myself, I basically served as bird retriever and shell collector for my dad.

I have already exposed my son to firearms in a limited sense, letting him collect empties during target sessions with my various semi-autos. He has his own set of earmuffs, and loves wearing them. Lately he has been asking me, "When are we gonna shoot your big guns?" It might be time to break out the .50 Hawken and let him get a whiff of good ol' black powder.

Oh yeah. The picture in my profile has been changed to a photo of the mummified face of Ramesses II, a pharaoh who died in 1213 B.C.

I swear, sometimes it seems like we have a little mucal clump of California right in our own state (Austin, that is), and whatever is wrong with that place, it seems to be infectious. Send a rep there and all of a sudden he/she goes downright fruit-loopy. This bill would change our state law so that anyone with an "identity document" from a foriegn country can get a driver's license.

Bullsquat. Anyone who still remembers 9/11 (some people have obviously forgotten) should know that handing out DL's willy-nilly is a big mistake.

During my brief stint as a trucker, I had a load that was going from Washington (state) to Edmonton, Alberta. The Canadian border guys gave me all kinds of hell because I wasn't carrying my birth certificate. It took them about three hours of phone calls to verify my birth records. And this was after they had opened the truck and verified that I was only carrying 33,000 pounds of pulp rolls.

Why don't they just disband the Border Patrol, build a couple hundred more bridges, and get it over with?

The border cops in Vancouver also confiscated my pepper spray. Apparently it's a "dangerous offensive weapon" up there. While being grilled about it, I was asked, "What are you doing with this, anyway?" He really wanted to nail me for something, I guess. I asked, "Have you ever walked across a truck stop in the middle of the night to use the bathroom?" You can't even get out to do an early-morning tire check in OKC without beating the lot lizards off with a stick, fortheluvva...

Good thing they didn't find the stun gun.

tnx to Down Deep In Texas

This woman is on a hunger strike to protest the Minuteman Project. Maybe she thought they meant April 2006 (or 2012, perhaps).